Axon's Automotive Anoroak – When car manufacturers disguise a car's DNA

In extolling the virtues of its first production model – the 1400 saloon – intriguingly SEAT neglected to make any mention the roots of the car in its news release last week. The very first SEAT was no more or no less than a badge-engineered version of the contemporary Fiat 1400, built under licence in Spain, but fully designed and developed in Italy, with no Spanish input.

For almost the first 40 years of SEAT’s existence, all of its production cars were based around Fiat models, with the Spanish brand’s first truly indigenous model – the Ibiza – launched in 1984, but still using re-engineered ‘System Porsche’ Fiat engines, including the trusty 903cc motor originally found in the mid-1960s Fiat 850, plus a Fiat Ritmo/Strada platform. The last Fiat-derived SEAT was the Panda-based Marbella, which was built into the late 1990s. 

Like SEAT, fellow Spanish vehicle maker Santana failed to give credit to its origins when it launched (re-launched) its direct Land Rover Defender competitor in 2004; the PS-10 Anibal. Santana Motors began building Land Rovers under licence from the Solihull 4x4 maker in 1958, and continued making them until 1983, when the Company severed its Land Rover agreement in favour of Suzuki.

Reacting to waning Suzuki SJ ‘Jeep’ sales, Santana re-introduced its own Defender derivative again in 2004, without making any acknowledgment of the obvious British classic 4x4 base at all for its ‘new’ PS-10. The Santana’s roots didn’t fool anyone though, and the ambitiously-priced Anibal didn’t sell, even when it was re-branded as the Iveco Massif.

Failing to recognise a vehicle’s source is not limited to the Spanish. For decades, General Motors, for example, has juggled its own brand names, plus others that it has been associated with, in some increasingly strained efforts to attempt sell more cars and inexpensively shoehorn a model into a market sector via another car brand.

In the USA, for example, the sub-compact Pontiac Le Mans was simply a re-badged Daewoo Nexia, with no mention made of its South Korean origins. The same goes for Geo models in the USA, derived from various Japanese Toyotas and Suzukis, plus the unsuccessful Passport and Asuna model ranges in Canada (mostly Suzuki and Isuzu cast-offs).

For the UK, some Holdens were sold as Vauxhalls (Monaro, VXR-8), with no acknowledgement of their Australian roots, with other brand-diluting GM outrages such as the Saab 9-2X (a mildly modified Subaru Impreza) and 9-7X (a knee jerk SUV fix, based on the underwhelming Chevrolet TrailBlazer) being sold in North America, where they struggled to attract customers, be they unconvinced Saab fans or general premium car buyers. The same went for the Saab 9-3-based Cadillac BLS; its BLS initials quickly attracting the nickname “Bit Like (a) Saab!”

GM’s rival Ford frequently tried this trick as well, selling the Kia Pride as the Festiva in the USA, with the Mazda 121 clone of the Ford Fiesta in Europe making no mention whatsoever of the ‘other’ base car brand. Ahead of these, in the late 1960s the Willys-Overland-developed Corcel – a family car created in Brazil in parallel with its Renault 12 cousin – never actually made it on to the market branded as a Willys; the model being launched in 1968 as the Ford Corcel, despite no input from Ford into the popular car’s creation.

The origins of quick fix ‘low cost’ cars to cynically exploit potential market niches, such as the Australian-built Lonsdale YD (a Mitsubishi Galant) and Sao Penza (a South African Mazda 323) were obvious, finding few takers. More popular sellers such as the Triumph Acclaim (a British Honda Ballade), Aston Martin Cygnet (a ‘posh’ Toyota iQ) and Volvo 340-Series (a re-branded Volvo 77) also made little mention of their ancestry.

The same applies to the Volkswagen K70, VW’s first front-wheel-drive model. The K70 was set to be introduced as an NSU (the Company that developed the model) at the 1969 Geneva Motor Show. NSU went to the extent of producing print ads and sales literature, when new-owner VW suddenly stopped the launch at the eleventh hour to re-brand it as a Volkswagen, despite the model clearly bearing strong styling links with the larger NSU R080, and using no VW components at all.

It’s a similar tale for the Eagle Premier, a North American derivative of the Renault 25, which was set to be launched under the French marque’s branding but went through a last-minute change when the Chrysler Group acquired AMC from Renault in the mid-1980s.

Arguably the most ‘disguised’ and controversial new model launch that went uncredited to the car’s true creators though was the first of the modern BMW-era MINI’s, the R50 of 2000. Much of the design and development work for the R50 MINI was resolved before BMW took over MG Rover, with the new Mini conceived and created in the UK by Rover’s British engineers that had long experience and expertise in front-wheel-drive vehicles, an area where BMW had zero know how, having only ever developed rear-wheel-drive cars for itself.

When the R50 MINI was launched a great acclaim in 2000, the model was instantly promoted as a BMW-conceived car, with the perceived German quality kudos that the BMW association brings, despite the development of the R50 being undertaken by MG Rover in the Midlands. For the R50’s successor, the second-generation R56 MINI of 2006 and beyond, BMW had considerably more input, by which time the German engineers had learned much about the secrets of developing front-wheel-drive vehicles from the R50, with the Bavarian brand introducing its own debut front-drive model, the 2-Series Active Tourer, in 2014.